By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

They say a week is a lifetime in politics, but I would say 12 seconds is a lifetime on the internet.   That’s what I’ve discovered anyway after trying out 12 Seconds.

There are lots of websites on the internet that allow you to leave videoclips and webcam clips but most of them are mindnumbingly boring, mostly due to the fact that the person in the clip doesn’t know when to shut up.   They ramble on and on, not realising that they are inflicting the terrible excruciating punishment of “death by waffling” upon their online audience.

This is where 12 Seconds really shines.    As the name suggests, you only get 12 seconds to say what you want to say.  Then you get cut off.   Look upon it as the “Twitter of videoclips”.   You get a strict time limit of 12 seconds and that’s it – no extensions.   This forces you to be concise and to the point.   It also forces spontaneity and off-the-cuff inventiveness, which can mean some pretty funny stuff sometimes.

But as I said, it makes you realize that 12 seconds can be a really long time.

Here’s my page here if you want to see my pathetic attempts, and although the service is invite only at the moment, I can send you an email invite if you want in.    Just send me an email at mark AT betterthantherapy.net and I will send you an invite.    I have 50 invites in my account, but I’m sure I can get more from 12 seconds if I ask nicely enough.

What would you say if you only had 12 seconds in which to say it?